At its face, SB 376 is a bill about fairness — a bill which seeks to ensure the University of California administration doesn’t undercut the wages and benefits of full-time employees by contracting services to agencies with cheaper labor for comparable work. It requires that the University of California calculate wage and benefits it pays its full-time employees for this work, and provide the same package for contract workers.

The students of the University of California, including those I represent at UCLA as its student body external vice president, largely identify with the principles informing this proposal. However, the passage of this otherwise well-intentioned provision implies the unraveling of victories earned for students after a year-long, hard-fought battle for state investment in the UC.

An unfunded mandate, the bill gravely complicates the budget deal that Gov. Brown, UC President Napolitano, and students wove so painfully together. The provisions of that budget — frozen tuition and more funds to reach a difficult enrollment mandate of 5000 additional students — are entirely compromised by SB 376’s expected $60 million price tag. While none of us disagree with the principle of the bill, students simply cannot afford to shoulder the cost of the bill, which will fall to the only funds the UC has left to pay for it: our recent enrollment grant funds, and after the freeze ends in two years, our tuition.

Thus unfunded costs of this kind effectively further state disinvestment in higher education, which is associated with a troubling human cost. As tuition has risen to unpayable levels, and student support services are spread too thin, among my peers are students who are saddled with highly risky, variable rate private loans and multiple minimum wage jobs. Some sleep in their cars, pay for a textbook instead of a meal, and are more generally thrust into the stresses of poverty, hoping also to achieve academic success amidst all this. As state support for our universities declines, so too does student life.

This reality raises serious questions of ethics. The bill’s author, Sen. Ricardo Lara, must be aware of these tragic costs — otherwise he would not arbitrarily exempt the other public higher education systems from his public contract law. Do those contract workers not also deserve higher wages and benefits? He does not want California State University students to bear these costs, so why UC students?

In the final analysis, it seems that SB 376 is, in fact, markedly unfair. It merely transfers money from one group of vulnerable Californians to another, with a high transaction cost, and without addressing the core issue at hand: a long-standing lack of political will to invest state support in our human capital.

In the case of SB 376, the Legislature’s call for fairness literally neglects to put its money where its mouth is. We will, without reservation, support this bill if the governor will fund the cost. Until then, we urge Gov. Brown to defend his budget deal and veto SB 376.